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c#xmlfiledictionarytransfer

How to map XML file content to C# object(s)


I am new to C# and I am trying to read an XML file and transfer its contents to C# object(s).

e.g. An example XML file could be:

<people>
    <person>
        <name>Person 1</name>
        <age>21</age>
    </person>
    <person>
        <name>Person 2</name>
        <age>22</age>
    </person>
</people>

.. could be mapped to an array of C# class called 'Person':

Person[] people;

Where a Person object could contain the following fields:

string name;
uint age;

Solution

  • It sounds like you want use XML serialization. There is a lot already out there, but this is a pretty simple example. http://www.switchonthecode.com/tutorials/csharp-tutorial-xml-serialization

    The snippet you want is about 1/4 of the way down:

    XmlSerializer deserializer = new XmlSerializer(typeof(List<Movie>));
    TextReader textReader = new StreamReader(@"C:\movie.xml");
    List<Movie> movies; 
    movies = (List<Movie>)deserializer.Deserialize(textReader);
    textReader.Close();
    

    Hopefully, this helps